More than 100 years before that, his ancestor Joseph Mondragon y Zeballos laid claim to a larger chunk of land in what's now Bexar and Atascosa counties.

Like other Spanish and Mexican land grant descendants throughout South Texas, much of their property is now gone, sold off by a little and a lot, subdivided over and again, stolen outright, or lost to taxes or fraud — all in spite of provisions in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Today, the 163rd anniversary of its signing, grievances remain over the treaty's unkept promises.

The document, which ended the Mexican American War and ceded 55 percent of Mexican territory to the United States, not only guaranteed citizenship to Mexican and Tejano settlers but assured them that they could keep their land.

Those provisions are widely viewed as having been ignored and reinterpreted.

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But among some of the Texas reclamantes, Spanish for claimant, the pride in their ancestry is strong and their anger is still palpable.

“Treaties like Guadalupe Hidalgo don't mean anything,” said Reynaldo Anzaldua, whose ancestors held at least four South Texas land grants, one of which encompassed more than 600,000 acres in Cameron, Willacy and Brooks counties — a lot of it, he said, on the King Ranch.

“It is in the past,” he said. “But the past is affecting us now. There's no doubt in my mind what happened. Our people's land was taken away from them.”

Over the years, land grant descendants have taken their claims to court, with minor success.

Anecdotally and historically, stories have abounded about discrimination, theft and even murder at the hands of land speculators, ranchers and Texas Rangers who did their bidding.

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“Sell me that land,” he said, “or I'll buy it from your widow.”

All Mendoza knows is that at one time, “Todo esto aquí,” all of this here, “era de nosotros,” was ours. Her family now lives on the last of a land grant, three-quarters of an acre, and in an adobe house more than 150 years old.

Her cousin Teresa Bustillos Abrego seems resigned that the land will never be theirs again. She doesn't seek financial compensation, either.

“We want recognition,” she said.

Last weekend, about 500 descendants met in San Antonio to hear about another potential avenue of restitution: proposed legislation that would amend the state's Unclaimed Property Act and give recognized heirs access to unclaimed mineral royalties derived from their ancestral lands.

An estimated $200 million to $561 million in such unclaimed payments rest in the Texas comptroller's office.

Fred Ballí, a member of a large group of descendants battling the Kenedy Memorial Foundation over 363,000 acres known as La Barreta that they believe belong to the family, said he won't stop fighting.

But what he'd like to see beyond compensation is the righting of the historical record.

“Put it in history books,” he said. “Tell the truth about what happened.”